History and Latin America

Workers Go Shopping in Argentina: The Rise of Popular Consumer Culture

Winner of the Thomas McGann Award from the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies

Combining theories from the anthropology of consumption, cultural studies, and gender studies with the methodologies of social, cultural, and oral histories, Natalia Milanesio shows the exceptional cultural and social visibility of low-income consumers in postwar Argentina along with their unprecedented economic and political influence. Her study reveals the scope of the remarkable transformations fueled by the new market by examining the language and aesthetics of advertisement, the rise of middle- and upper-class anxieties, and the profound changes in gender expectations.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Natalia Milanesio is an associate professor of history at the University of Houston in Texas.

ACCLAIM

“A detailed and insightful analysis of the rise of consumer culture in Argentina linked to the demographically enlarged and politically empowered working class during Juan Perón’s administrations (1946–1955).”

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American Historical Review

“A major contribution not only to the voluminous literature on Peronism, but also to the relatively uncharted field of Latin American material history.”

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Journal of Latin American Studies

“A complex and rich account of how citizenship as well as social, gender, and national identities formed around, and together with, the development of a worker-consumer culture in Peronist Argentina.”